“Crashing through the thin white clouds I saw the reservoir below us, it was gray and rippling because
of the heavy winds that day. Perry, who was flying the plane, asked me if I would like to get a little
lower. Before I could Nod a ‘yes’ in response he was already lowering the plane. In the forest to the left I
could make out a watch tower with blinking lights. ‘So this is what it feels like to be a bird’ I joked to
myself. I understood why Perry loved to fly so much .I had never felt so free and alive in my life.


“Perry couldn’t get the plane to go back up after that. He told me how sorry he was, and then he
let us crash in the early December water .Never have I ever been so cold, I felt like at that
moment I was forming into a block of heavy ice, that sunk deeper and deeper into the water. I
forgot about Perry then.


“My seatbelt would not come undone, and my heart clenched as death pushed itself into
my mind for the first time. I felt Perry’s hands tug at the belt to, I was happy to know I still had him then.
When I was free I pulled him out of his seat and carried is broken body towards the back of the plane
which had already detached itself from the rest of its broken body. All that was left of the plane was the
front, where, fortunately, Perry and I had sat.We laid ourselves out on top of the battered plane and
rest for a minute. Perry had two broken legs and here I was, lying down on His plane, perfectly fine and
not knowing what to do when this last piece of plane sunk just like the rest.

“When I felt that rush of cold water hit the back off my body I wrapped my arms around Perry,
not really sure what would happen. The darkness enveloped us and it continued like that for a while as I
contemplated our options, I began to try to swim myself up, pulling Perry with me. I couldn’t hold us
both anymore I was not even close to breaking the surface when Perry started to scream through the
water, the bubbles that flowed out of his mouth bounced against my arms. We were sinking and I couldn’t
hold both me and him up and keep us both alive. So I let him go.

“I was still sinking. I began to take of my jacket, and toe my boots off my feet so I could swim a
little longer. I hoped that these were not the last minutes of my life. I have two daughters waiting for me
to pick them up from school. I have a wife waiting for me to walk through the front door of our house,
and kiss her cheek. I have a mother who had just lost her 28 year old daughter, and I know she would not
live if I died too. So I laid there for several hours waiting to be rescued in the freezing water .I hoped that
someone would notice my battered body floating here in the water, drag me out , and wrap me in a warm
blanket then drive me home to see my family again. At this moment I prayed.
“God, do not let my daughters grow up without a father”

“I was nearly dead when someone pulled me out of the water and onto the floor of a boat. They
found me face down, and unconscious. I will forever be grateful for the 3 hunters who heard the plane
crash and reported it to the watch tower with the blinking lights. I spent three weeks in the hospital
suffering from hypothermia.”

On a warm august night my father explains to my sister and I, how someone was answering his
prayers that cold December morning.